Dutch government told to address refugee centre conditions without delay

The Dutch government has been ordered to take “immediate action” to help those most at risk at the country’s chronically overcrowded main refugee reception centre at Ter Apel – rather than wait until judges hear its appeal next month against an injunction ordering it to act.

That injunction, issued a fortnight ago by a court in The Hague in response to an application by the refugee NGO, Vluchtelingenwerk, instructed the government to comply urgently with EU guidelines on the provision of emergency aid and with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Despite the fact that conditions at the centre have been widely described as both “inhumane” and “primitive”, the government – to almost universal surprise – responded by saying it would appeal the ruling on the grounds that the crisis could not be resolved in weeks “or even months”.

The appeal is scheduled for November and the government is expected to argue that the bottleneck is being created by the unwillingness of a majority of the country’s local authorities to earmark permanent downstream accommodation for refugees.

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As if anticipating that response, however, the court intervened again this week to say that between now and the hearing of the appeal, it expected the government to take “immediate action” at Ter Apel to help those most at risk.

In a shot across the government’s bows, the judges observed: “The interests of these refugees and asylum seekers are more important than those of the state. It will not be effort wasted to take immediate action.”

Having heard detailed evidence at its earlier sitting about the unsanitary and unsafe conditions at  the centre, the judges said they wanted heavily pregnant women, families with children, and those with serious illnesses moved without delay to “more regular housing”.

In addition, responding to concerns raised repeatedly by the children’s ombudsman, Margrite Kalverboer, the judges said they also wanted to see proper accommodation for unaccompanied minors – of whom there were some 300 living at the centre earlier this month.

“They clean their teeth in the toilets with their fingers and there are no showers”, Ms Kalverboer recounted. “In one case, two girls were sleeping in the same room as 30 boys without adequate supervision. They are grey with exhaustion.”

The low point of the crisis came on August 24th when a three-month-old baby died in a sports hall at the centre.

A new controversy has since blown up because although the mother of the infant was allowed to “look at” her child’s post mortem report, she has not been given a copy, as requested.

“Looking at the document is a useless exercise since the lady does not speak Dutch and is not a doctor”, said her lawyer, Richard Korver.